movies by or about women opening UK/Ire Oct 23–25
Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, and Natalia Reyes star in Terminator: Dark Fate; more… [This post is for Patreon patrons only for the first month.]
Catherine O’Hara
movies by or about women opening US/Can Oct 11
Pamela Pettler and Erica Rivinoja cowrite The Addams Family; more… [This post is for Patreon patrons only for the first month.]
memo to Christopher Guest: Please take on Sarah Palin. Please
I’ll help you write it, Mr. Guest. Or I’ll just stand aside in gape in awe as you work. Pretty please?
Killers (review)
Kutcher is barely plausible in those TV ads for digital cameras, sneaking up on people to take their pictures. A spy and hired killer? Don’t make me laugh.
Where the Wild Things Are (review)
Will there be a bigger disappointment for me this year than Spike Jonze’s *Where the Wild Things Are*? Gosh, I hope not: I’m not sure my heart could take it.
Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of Horrors, and Beetlejuice (review)
Why do slasher movies make us laugh in the instant after we jump and scream? When comedy works, it’s for the same reason that horror does: It surprises us, and laughter and screams emanate from that same primitive lizard part of our brains, one that reacts before we can think.
Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman (review)
Put Christopher Guest right on top of the list of They Who Can Do No Wrong. As if the recent DVD release and reappearance in theaters of This Is Spinal Tap weren’t enough for fans of his diverse talent and deadpan humor, he now bestows upon us Best in Show, another of the hilarious and poignant mockumentaries that, in the vein of his 1996 film Waiting for Guffman, poke gentle fun not only at their fictional subjects but at their real-life counterparts and movie audiences as well.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (review)
Some fans and critics have suggested that Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton’s most personal film, that that artistic, outcast lost boy is a stand-in for Burton himself. I suspect this might even be true. But if Edward is Burton’s conscious reflection of himself, then I have a gut feeling that The Nightmare Before Christmas may be the movie closest to Burton’s subconscious. This Edward Gorey phantasm of a film, I think, is Burton’s id come to life.
Home Alone (review)
The king of 80s teen angst, John Hughes will be forever be venerated by Gen-Xers as the writer/director of our Holy Flick: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But his favorite movie with the rest of the world is probably Home Alone, which Hughes wrote. One indication, admittedly drawn from an extremely tiny sampling of moviewatchers: To this day, ten years after the release of the biggest-grossing film of 1990, my mother — who tends to refer to actors as ‘the guy from that TV show’ or ‘the one who was married to that other one in that movie’ — calls Macaulay Culkin, adoringly, ‘Home Alone.’
